


Bucky Barnes' Guide to Ill-Advised Home Renovation

by AggressiveWhenStartled



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Actually green with jealousy, Bucky Barnes is Bad at Feelings, But I joke about it, Developing Relationship, F/M, Hulk!Steve, Jacuzzis, Jealousy, M/M, Minor Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson, No one breaks a jaw in this one, Overuse of italics, Sam Wilson is not their therapy animal, Steve Rogers is Bad at Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 01:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15570522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AggressiveWhenStartled/pseuds/AggressiveWhenStartled
Summary: “Okay,” Barnes said, hiding behind an overturned breakfast bar with a rifle half full of what Tony Stark called ‘rubber bullets, but like, for elephants.’ “So you’re mad.”Sam almost risked exposing his head just to give that the look it deserved, but he decided that if Barnes didn’t know already what a dumbass fuckup he was, Sam wasn’t going to be able to shut his trap with anything less than high dose tranquilizers.Across a bigger open floor plan than they had previously enjoyed at the tower, Steve Rogers lowered his gargantuan green head androared.





	Bucky Barnes' Guide to Ill-Advised Home Renovation

**Author's Note:**

> I got suggestions, advice, and jokes from a LOT of people on this one: Skellerbvvt, Silentwalrus, Galwednesday, Quietnight, JHSCdude, Nendian, and Magdaliny, thank you all SO MUCH. 
> 
> Everyone, you shouldn't take relationship advice from slash fic on the internet, but if you do, don't take any ideas from this one. It would be a Bad Idea.

“Okay,” Barnes said, hiding behind an overturned breakfast bar with a rifle half full of what Tony Stark called ‘rubber bullets, but like, for elephants.’ “So you’re mad.”

Sam almost risked exposing his head just to give that the look it deserved, but he decided that if Barnes didn’t know already what a dumbass fuckup he was, Sam wasn’t going to be able to shut his trap with anything less than high dose tranquilizers.

Across a bigger open floor plan than they had previously enjoyed at the tower, Steve Rogers lowered his gargantuan green head and _roared_. 

“Look, it takes two people to not define a relationship, Steve,” Barnes tried, and Steve threw the bedroom wall at him. _Sam’s_ bedroom wall. The breakfast bar took the brunt of it, but Barnes grunted and skidded back eight feet. Steve was no wilting daisy at the worst of times, but now it was like a bull got crossed with a Scottish mountain.

“Oh for…” Sam muttered, joining in and chucking a hunk of drywall in Barnes’ direction even though he didn’t have the excuse of supervillain-induced hulkism. “Barnes!” he shouted over Steve’s enraged bellow. “You are _not helping!_ ”

“I didn’t even do anything, I was just _asking_ —”

“Are you _kidding me_ , Barnes!”

“Sitrep,” Natasha said next to Sam’s ear, and he nearly leapt right out of his fucking skin. No one should have been up here, since no one could get past the mulched-up stairwell without heavy machinery that might spook Steve further. The windows were out— they’d tried bringing a copter up and Steve had nearly beaned it down the elevator. Honestly, it was probably for the best, since right now the absolute last thing they needed was more stressors. 

Natasha had apparently eeled up the crumbled cement warren without dislodging anything, snuck past Steve’s super hearing and hulked-out animal instincts and snuggled herself in behind half an overturned china cabinet with Sam before anyone noticed. Sam was impressed, and a little turned on.

If she assassinated Barnes to make him stop talking, Sam would marry her on the spot. “The _situation_ is that Barnes is a _dumbfuck blockhead bruiser_ ,” Sam said loudly, and got the metal finger held up over the breakfast bar at him. “Stark fill you in on the hulk serum bullshit?”

Natasha nodded. She wasn’t dressed for combat—nice to know she’d gotten the same feelings about Steve’s tantrum as he had. Dude hadn’t thrown shit at _Sam_ , and he wasn’t moving fast enough to actually hurt Barnes, either. He was making a hell of a mess, though. “Tranq darts filled with some sort of booster shot to beef the serum up to Hulk levels? Stark said it didn’t work at first.”

“Oh, it worked,” Sam assured her. Across the room, Barnes was still trying to reason with Steve. Sam tuned it out, because honestly, he could not take this much stupid in one sitting. “But Steve takes the all-time Olympic gold at repressing the shit out of his feelings and staying calm in the heat of battle, so all he did was breathe pretty hard and have his neck tendons do that gross bulgy thing. Kept his cool all the way home, didn’t so much as squint until fucking _Lothario_ over here ambushed him with a damn _open relationship overture_ the second he opened the door.”

“I did not!”

Steve roared so loud the china in their defensive cabinet rattled, and then he chucked the couch out the window.

“What,” said the Black Widow.

“Steve,” Sam tried, going for calm. “Dude. That was my couch. I bought that couch with Stark’s money that he gave me to make up for having to hang around you two. That was a hard-earned couch.”

“You know,” Barnes shouted at Steve. He had hefted himself up over the edge of the debris to point at Steve like a suicidally angry terrier. “If you could get over your fucking allergy to talking about your feelings for _five goddamn minutes_ , we wouldn’t be _in_ this whole damn mess, so really this is _your_ fault, Steve!”

Steve bellowed and charged, slamming all of what looked like half a ton of overclocked green muscle into the bedroom wall, breakfast bar, and supersoldier boyfriend. Barnes avoided death only by flipping over the top as it collided with the oven backsplash, parkouring around the cooking vent and overhead lighting and taking off for the shelter of the bathroom counter that was laying on its side like a beached whale done in peach marble. He spent the _entire time_ complaining loudly about Steve’s complete inability to talk about how his heart interacted with his dick. 

Steve howled in fury, stomping after him hard enough to leave huge crushed craters in his wake. “You know,” Sam said, “I bet if you just murdered Barnes this whole thing would blow over a lot faster.”

“Sam, what the fuck does he think he’s _doing_ ,” Natasha asked, turning incredulous eyes on him. 

“ _I have no earthly idea_ ,” Sam told her, ducking as the whole floor shook and plaster dust rained down on them. 

“You have been avoiding me for a _month_ ,” Barnes shouted from the bathroom, and Sam kept his head down since the crashes were all moving away from him. “You have been avoiding talking about this for a _month_. I am _not out of line_.”

Natasha sharpened all over and narrowed her eyes at Sam. “This is about Steve’s—”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Steve has been shitting his pants over how scared he is that maybe, _what if maybe_ Barnes doesn’t want to commit, he has been since they started fucking in _June_ , and so he has been pulling every 1940s stereotypical divorce-your-feelings bullshit move he can to avoid talking about it and give Barnes a chance to tell him so. _Barnes_ has been trying to pin him down on what he wants and has been chasing his own tail for just about as long. And _I_ have been considering developing a drinking problem ever since they realized how much they want to gaze adoringly at each other, but with their dicks _out_ this time.”

Natasha transferred her gaze back out at the two of them again. Barnes was shouting about therapy over Steve’s ‘roided out bellowing, which was fucking rich on top of being kind of impressive. It’s not easy to be heard over the dulcet tones of a jilted white dude cracked out on two super serums.

“And _today_ ,” Sam continued, thinking about that drinking problem _really hard_ , “Barnes decided to force a confrontation _right when Steve walked in the door full of hulk steroids_ by _playing into exactly what Steve had been picturing in his worst abandonment relationship nightmares the entire fucking time_.”

“I didn’t _know_ he was on hulk steroids!” Barnes yelled, this time from the living room, and Steve made a noise like a freight train going down the track sideways and pounded after him. “And I just _asked_. It’s not like I let him walk in with my mouth on Logan’s dick and his hand up my ass!”

Steve went fucking _apeshit_. Sam cursed with feeling as he and Natasha scrambled away from the blowback. Steve started smashing everything within arms’ reach, using one of their beds as a club. _Sam’s bed._

“No,” Sam shouted at Barnes, who was doing frantic superassassin gymnastics to avoid turning into a thin paste. “No, you just ambushed him with Wolverine, a beer, and everything he’s been running scared from since your first dumb kiss at the Grand Canyon. You just jump him in the doorway with ‘hey Stevie, you’re cool with me fooling around, right?’ wearing your stupid fuck-me nightclub shirt half open, no underwear, jeans you can see your dick through and _a motherfuckin’ tongue ring!_ ”

“And he did this with Logan right there?” Natasha asked, aghast, over the resulting screams and property damage.

“ _Yes_ ,” Sam told her.

“Is Logan _still_ here?” She demanded, looking around like maybe he was hiding in a cupboard somewhere.

“Fuck no.” It sounded like Steve was using the leather easy chair as a flyswatter. Sam jerked his head towards the stairs. “He’s a smart dude. He knocked back the rest of his beer and noped right the fuck out of this train wreck.”

“Logan is a gutless backstabbing deserter,” Bucky complained from across the carnage, sounding out of breath. “I wouldn’t blow him even if Steve _did_ say yes.”

“Shut _up_ , Barnes,” Sam yelled at him, peeking out to see Steve go after the moron with his bare hands. 

“So I guess the True Love protocol is out,” Natasha muttered, tapping her fingers on a piece of shattered crockery. 

“Dunno. Hey, shit-for-brains,” Sam shouted at Barnes, who was ricocheting off their destroyed entertainment center. “You think you can stop being such a douchebag for ten minutes to try True Love?”

“Get fucked, Wilson!” Barnes yelled at him, but then his voice went low and crooning, and Sam felt his gorge rise just being in the same room. That was _absolutely_ the bedroom voice Sam knew to flee the second it showed up. He’d been hearing a lot in the past month as Steve and Barnes each ramped their anxieties up and then tried to fix it with sex. “Hey. Baby. Sweetheart. C’mon.”

The effect it had on Steve was a lot more positive and pretty much immediate. He paused, heaving huge, wet breaths, his head tilted in Barnes’ direction like he just couldn’t help it. His fists relaxed, and Sam thought he might be a little smaller than he’d been before. 

“Dollface, yeah, that’s it.” Barnes risked inching forward, hands out with open palms. “That’s it, baby. I can’t kiss on you when you’re throwing things.”

Steve was definitely shrinking, which was _infuriating_ , since apparently Barnes could have easily fixed all this _half an hour ago_. Steve had been enormous—hunching over to avoid the steel girders in the arched ceiling, back still brushing the lighting fixtures. He could almost fit comfortably now if he stood up straight. He leaned in towards Barnes, making a soft chuffing noise, and Bucky brushed his hands across Steve’s gargantuan brow. 

“Logan didn’t even like my new tongue ring,” Barnes said, and Steve smashed him across the room with a built-in bookcase.

“You fucking—” Sam got ready to run as Steve hefted the bookcase and threw it after Barnes. “Hey, Don Juan, you dead?”

A metal arm emerged from the carnage and gave him a weak thumbs up.

“We could try the Young Man protocol,” Natasha suggested, and Sam turned to glare at her. 

“No.” Sam turned his back again. “You’ll make me be the mom. You be the mom.”

Natasha gave him the look she used to make reporters cry. 

Sam wavered only slightly. “The entire world already thinks I’m some kind of supersoldier therapy animal,” he protested. “I’m not gonna be his mom too. _You_ be the mom.”

“I think he’s gonna go after your record collection next,” Natasha said, and Sam Wilson knew he was already suckered into it before she’d even suggested anything.

“ _Steven Grant Rogers,_ ” Sam said feelingly, standing up straight and projecting ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing’ as hard as he could. “You leave my shit alone!”

Steve rounded on him with an indignant huff, but he didn’t smash anything. Sam tried to keep his body language calm and stern, hoping he wasn’t wrong about Steve being able to hold back enough not to actually hurt anyone. If he was about to die because of _Bucky goddamn Barnes_ , he’d haunt the fucking tower for the entirety of his pissed off afterlife, but he figured Barnes wasn’t dead yet and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

“Look at this place.” Sam gestured, slowly but firmly, and Steve’s gaze swung to follow it. “I live here, Steve.” Only like every other weekend, sure, but still. “Look at what you’ve done to it. I haven’t done anything to you.”

Steve blinked, eyes darting and refocusing. He flexed, taking a deep breath. 

“You backhanded your boyfriend with a bookcase, Steve,” Sam said, proud he made it come out like a bad thing. Steve swiveled like a revolving glacier to look in Barnes’ direction. The metal arm sticking out of the wreckage waved helpfully.

“You can’t just break our furniture over Barnes’ head every time he’s a fuckup, buddy. We’d end up at Ikea every three hours.” The metal arm flipped him off again. Sam resolutely ignored it. “We do not smash up our _shared home_ when we are upset. Put back the kitchen counter and _think about what you’ve done._ ”

It was like magic. It only took about a half hour of shame-faced tidying before Steve shrank down from big green bastard to an only surprisingly large heavily-muscled white dude with a bad haircut. He rubbed his hand through the haircut, making it worse, and looked over to give them an embarrassed wave.

Sam slapped him on the back and Natasha tilted her chin at him. “Hey man,” Sam said. “I thought I was done getting my shit trashed when I moved out of my college dorm. Come on.”

Steve groaned.

“Let’s pack an overnight bag and get a hotel,” Natasha suggested, steering him towards the area that used to be a bedroom. “Someplace expensive. It will be terrible, Steve, you’ll hate it, all you’ll be able to think about is the floating dollar signs wafting away into the pockets of some rich Californian mogul, but it won’t get you mad enough to hulk out and you’ll be preoccupied all night.”

“Good idea,” Sam agreed. “And I am going to _love it_ , because it will be your money paying for it and I’ll have a jacuzzi. Perfect. Natasha, you are brilliant.”

“Of course I am,” she said, pleased, as she stuffed a paper shopping bag she’d found under an end table with whatever clothes she could find and bustled Steve back out again. 

“Hey!” Bucky shouted from under the bookshelves. “Is anyone going to dig me the fuck out?”

“No,” said Sam, and closed what was left of the door.

***

Hours later, Sam closed a different door behind him and _almost_ lost his senses enough to take Natasha by the arm and hustle her down the hall. Almost. He still had enough presence of mind left that he knew getting stilettoed by Natasha for manhandling her was not how he wanted to cartwheel off this mortal coil. He gave her a significant look instead and high-tailed it for the hotel lobby, hoping she’d follow.

“You packed one of Barnes’ shirts in that bag,” he accused when she came downstairs. “Steve is up there staring at it right now.”

“He gonna go green?” she asked, looking interested but not nearly worried enough about an enormous lovesick supersoldier trashing an upscale overpriced penthouse in the middle of Manhattan. 

“ _No_ , he’s not gonna go green. He’s just gonna sulk all night,” Sam told her. “You didn’t do that by accident. Come on, Natasha. You gotta let them figure this shit out themselves.”

“You tried that,” she pointed out, examining an imaginary wrinkle on her sleeve. “And then James sent Steve into a terrified jealous rage powered by mind-altering supervillain hulk drugs.”

It wasn’t that she was _wrong_ , but, “Firstly, how are the hulk drugs _my_ fault, and secondly, this was a dumpster fire seventy years before I even got here,” Sam said. “You don’t put those out with gasoline!”

“James is an idiot, and ‘lets make him jealous’ is an adolescent ploy at _best_ , but Steve—”

There was a sudden crash upstairs, and then some screaming. Natasha closed her eyes for a moment. “You said he wasn’t going to go green.”

“You gave him the shirt not knowing if he was going to go green or not?” Sam asked, incredulous, as they both took off running. “He _wasn’t_ going to, he was doing the thing after a fight where there isn’t anyone nearby to hit or protect and he’s just sitting around getting mad...at...himself.” Sam covered his face with his hands for as long as he safely could running behind a soviet superspy in pursuit of a giant self-immolating rage monster. “That stupid sonofabitch hulked out getting mad at his own damn self, didn’t he.”

“Probably,” Natasha agreed.

“Oh for _fuck’s sake_ ,” Sam said, _really_ considering that drinking problem. 

***

“Why are we climbing up the fire escape? I can _fly_ ,” Sam hissed, clambering over the rusty metal rails and trying not to make it sound like a bag full of old xylophone parts thrown down the steps. “I flew here, I flew to this fire escape, now we’re climbing up it instead like a pair of bozos.”

Natasha gave him a withering look, mimed zipping her lips shut and pointed up to the edge of the roof.

“STEVE SORRY,” drifted down from the brick edging. Steve didn’t seem to be talking to them, so Sam hooked an arm over the next balcony and hoped pull ups would be better than the clanging the stairs were making.

“I know they’re up there, that’s _why I flew here_ ,” Sam whispered, half his mind on the situation at hand and the other half worrying about fire escape tetanus.

“And if _they_ figure out you flew here we won’t be able to spy on them for blackmail later,” Natasha hissed back in his ear, almost inaudible, so Sam rolled his eyes and edged up beside her to see.

“I was stupid, I was so stupid, sweetheart,” Barnes was saying, cupping Steve’s green face in his hands. It was the size of a moss covered bison. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have tried to make you jealous, I was out of my dumb damn mind with wanting you to talk to me and I acted like a heel.” He touched their foreheads together. He had to stand on tiptoe to reach.

“NO WOLVERINE,” Steve said, screwing up his craggy brows and looking like he was about to start crying big green chemical tears.

“I don’t think Logan has shaved with anything but pruning shears since the Civil War, champ,” Barnes assured him, kissing a cheekbone that could shelter a shetland pony. “I never wanted Logan, I wanted you to tell me what you wanted.”

“STEVE WANT NO WOLVERINE.”

“Yeah baby, okay, let’s be exclusive.”

“There is a reason,” Sam said to Natasha and covered his eyes, “I never watched the Shape of Water. And this is it. This is it right here.”

“I watched it,” Natasha told him, sounding gleeful, and Sam thought about covering her eyes, too, but decided to live instead. 

“C’mon honey,” Barnes told Steve, and it sounded like he was kissing him again. Sam tried not to picture it. “Let’s go home.”

“You assholes _broke_ home,” Sam muttered, and Natasha smacked him in the side.

“STEVE HOTEL?” Steve asked hopefully, apparently thinking the same thing, and that was it. That was the last damn straw. 

Sam spun back around, infuriated, and started up the ladder again. “No _fucking way_ ,” he shouted. Natasha put Sam in an absent minded headlock and covered his mouth, still rapt. 

“Yeah baby, sure.” Barnes climbed up on the far edge of the roof, looking back at nine feet of artichoke giant like he was a fashion model with his pants open. Sam made an angry noise into Natasha’s arm and flailed. 

Steve grinned shyly around a mouth full of enormous yellow slabs and started running just as Barnes jumped over the edge. They took off over the rooftops like a pair of mutant kangaroos and Sam thought he was going to lose his damn mind.

“You just let them—” he sputtered as soon as Natasha let go of him. He couldn’t even get it out. “You just let them—! That is _my_ fancy penthouse, they’re going to _my_ fancy penthouse! I was going to luxuriate in Manhattan with champagne and thirty dollar bath bombs on Steve’s dime to recuperate from watching their lover’s spat destroy my Avenger suite, and now. And now!”

“And now,” Natasha agreed.

“ _Barnes is going to fuck the Hulk in my goddamn jacuzzi_.”

“Yes, he is,” Natasha said cheerfully, and Sam wished his hair was longer so he could pull it out.

“I hope Barnes breaks something,” Sam ground out, stomping down the fire escape. “I hope he can’t walk for the rest of the week. I hope he _dislocates his jaw_.”

Natasha looked thoughtful. “I mean, probably,” she admitted. “I can’t imagine how he wouldn’t.”

“Oh for—” Sam managed, closing his eyes and trying to picture rainbows and kittens instead, and got ready to jump off the roof. Maybe he’d fly over to his mom’s and drown his sorrows in fresh baked cookies.

“You wanna go back to my place?” Natasha called after him, and Sam made a face. 

“Yes,” he admitted, “but you’re on the hook for mimosas and LUSH supplies. And if you call me Bigfoot even _once_ , I am out and staying in Harlem.”

“You sure? I have this new tearaway nightie I need to test out,” Natasha told him. “My jacuzzi’s bigger than yours, too.” 

Sam thought about that.

He thought about that for a good while.

“You know what,” he decided, giving in. “I do a really good Bela Lugosi impression.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Bucky Barnes' Guide to Ill-Advised Home Renovation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15604875) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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